


Ace of Spades

by EchoResonance



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Laven Week 2015, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 12:15:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4521558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoResonance/pseuds/EchoResonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt "Obsession" for Laven Week</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ace of Spades

Lavi wasn’t the obsessive sort. He didn’t spend a lot of energy on any one thing, didn’t let his thoughts be consumed with a single subject or single concern. Maybe it was just because he thought about so much, because he always wanted to know more and keep learning and as such _couldn’t_ focus on one topic for too long. He wasn’t supposed to grow fond enough of anything to develop an obsession; it was one of those “Bookman things.” He didn’t live his life for himself, he lived it for the pursuit of knowledge and for the recording of hidden history, things that never made it into the books about wars and other events. When you can’t live for yourself, you don’t generally form attachments, and in his case he wasn’t allowed to. A Bookman stayed apart from all that nonsense because a Bookman had to be impartial and unbiased while they recorded.

But despite every rule telling him that he shouldn’t care, that he didn’t need a heart and should never have one, _something_ was weighing heavily in his chest, something that he wished he could remove but didn’t know how. When you spend eighteen years of your life without a heart, you don’t really know how to treat a nonexistent injury done to it. He had no idea how his chest could hurt like this in lieu of any actual damage, but hurt it did, deeply and insistently.

The object in his pocket wasn’t helping him at all. It was sitting in the inside pocket of his coat at all times, seeming heavy as a stone though in truth it was so light that you would never notice it was there at all. He’d picked it up automatically, not really thinking about it at the time as his fingers plucked it from the ground and tucked it into his jacket, but ever since then he hadn’t been able to get rid of it.

Whenever Bookman would leave him to his own devices, he’d pull that thin little rectangle from inside his coat and just look at it, worrying the corners to ruin and watching as the ink slowly began to fade from all the times he held it out in the sun. That stupid playing card made Lavi feel as though he was carrying the weight of the world, though that was hardly fair. It was just a card. Just the Ace of Spades. There was nothing inherently important about it.

Other than the long days in which it was both his source of strength, and his source of weakness. When Lavi believed his best friend, Allen Walker, to be dead and his Innocence destroyed, that playing card was his drive. He tried to stay strong for Lenalee, tried to put on his casual mask for Bookman, but that card was what kept him going. If he fought enough foes, if he ran far enough, if he caught the bastard responsible for Allen’s death, somehow something in the world would right itself, and that card was his constant reminder.

He’d found the Ace of Spades at Allen’s supposed death site. Where his body was, Lavi had no idea, but there was no mistaking that Allen had died there, and the only thing left was a single memento from Allen’s pack of cards. It was the only thing left of his friend, the boy he wasn’t supposed to consider a comrade, and he kept it as a reminder that he’d failed. He’d failed to keep himself separate as a Bookman, he’d failed to save his friend as an Exorcist, he’d failed to do anything useful as himself.

Even now, with Allen having basically returned from the dead with his Innocence returned and transformed, Lavi felt the weight of that card whenever he wore his coat. Allen was back, but he bore more burdens than ever, and Lavi couldn’t help. There was nothing Lavi could do for the boy with an unwilling connection to the Noah Clan, nothing he could do for his friend that was under suspicion from the only place he’d been able to call home. He still couldn’t quite put the card away, the playing card that was still a memento of both his weakness and his strength, that link to Allen Walker, the boy he could never help.

Lavi had let his role as Bookman blur and become close to Allen, then he had let him die. He had let Road try to break his mind and force him to fight Allen, to hurt and try to kill him. He’d let himself be useless to his own friend, let himself hurt his friend, and even now what was he doing? Staring at this stupid goddamn playing card alone in his room, looking at the Ace of Spades and seeing instead Allen Walker’s face, both scared and tired, while he sat there, useless.

Oh, how he longed to crush the worn-out card in his fist, to fling it into the debris of information that carpeted his floor and just forget the damn thing. To be free of this burden that the card was responsible for, to push away his memories of the night Tim showed him and Lenalee what had happened to Allen, to forget that he had friends he had failed so many times. Oh, he wished it all would just go away.

But he knew it wouldn’t. That small, paper thin card with its frayed edges and bent corners was his obsession, and he would never be rid of it.


End file.
